The Key To Drinking More Water And A Huge Thank You | Sunday Shares

Sunday, October 28, 2018

Happy Sunday, friends. Last night I was up too late (3:30! Who am I?) and my body insisted on a full eight hours of sleep despite all of my alarms, hence the late start here.

Boy, has there been a lot going on. I had some sort of commitment every day for two weeks straight, which really isn't a lot in the grand scheme of things but felt absolutely draining in the moment. To make up for it, I made zero plans this past week to let myself decompress and, man, it was my best decision. The cleanliness of my apartment is suffering a bit because of it but ya gotta do whatcha gotta do, ya know? (It also allowed me no time to watch any more episodes of "The Haunting of Hill House," which is what I'm most upset about, to be honest.)

Although, it's worth mentioning that I am so much less high strung about things being clean in this new place. In a good way. I'm not a slob; I still want things tidy. But if a mess has to sit for a few days, I'm not freaking out about it nearly as much as I used to. That's the beauty of extra space, my friends.

Anyways. The commitments. I was doing a lot for two weeks, such as: Busy Phillipps book talk, which was such a cool experience (I've only been to a book talk one other time, for Anna Kendrick's memoir); going to see the new "Halloween" movie; two escape rooms, one for a work outing and one for my mom's birthday; cleaning and closing out my old apartment; my second haunted house of the season, plus more boring things that aren't interesting to talk about, like oil changes and errands.

Due to the lack of free time, I don't really have many things to share this week. I usually jot ideas down as I go, but this time I opened up by Notes app and saw only three. Oh well. What can ya do?

Here's what I've been loving lately:

Water bottle with time markings

You guys. This is a game changer. For real. If you suck at drinking enough water, buy this water bottle. I was in a bad habit of waking up in the morning after seven hours of no water, not drinking any as I got ready, making coffee and drinking that in the morning, then hitting lunchtime wondering if I had more than a few sips of water. That's bad.

So I bought this water bottle. It's 32 ounces and keeps you on track to drink two full bottles (AKA your recommended eight cups a day) over the course of 12 hours, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. No joke, I am now easily drinking that plus more.

If you search "timer water bottle" on Amazon, there are a ton. A lot of them have the time markings in Comic Sans, though, so I'd recommend this one.

The Guardian's interview with Busy Phillipps

Will I ever stop talking about Busy Phillipps? Probably not. I mean, her new show premieres tonight and is on the next three nights too, so I'll be talking about her for at least another week.

This article, though. A very powerful conversation about being a teen TV star, the tough experiences she reveals in her book, and how life never really gets easier for anyone. Reading it gave me goosebumps, actually, "because underneath even the smiliest of online influencers lie generations of women's fury." Dang.

"Your worth is not measured by your productivity."

Okay, so this isn't a thing you can buy or watch or do, but it's a very nice motto that we should all probably keep in mind. I know I have (been trying to).

We can all probably agree that checking something off of your to-do list is one of the best feelings. On the other hand, having a task linger on your to-do list for so long that it rolls onto next week's is one of the worst. Or at least it is for me. It makes me feel like I'm not doing anything, not making any progress, no matter how many other things were checked off. Ergo, the reminder: My worth is not measured by my productivity.

Getting things done is cool. Putting off non-essential tasks to take care of your well-being is also cool.

Messages from YOU

This isn't a thing either but it is something I'm loving and I do want to mention it. I wanted to mention it in the first half, but I rambled too much about being busy and cleaning so I'm tacking it on to the end here, extending my list of three to a solid four.

I have received some very nice messages over the past two weeks, really for no reason at all, and it makes me so happy. This blog is a hobby. I do it because I want to and because I enjoy it. Still, I feel the pressure of pageviews. I know they aren't as high as they should be after three years of blogging. If I think about it too much, I bum myself out and convince myself that this is all pointless. I actually almost scrapped my last post altogether because I felt like I wasn't getting the tone right. Then I got a message from someone saying they loved it and could relate to it. And suddenly, it was worth it.

It's comforting to know someone is listening. So thank you. Thank you for letting me know if a post resonated with you, for laughing at my instastories, for responding to my posts, for thinking I'm a refreshing presence on social media or that I make life feel more manageable (wow). That's mostly what I've been loving lately.